Faculty Exhibition: Department of Art and Photography
Biography

Our senior studio artist, Paul Tschinkel, has been writing, filming and producing video, and more recently, DVD interviews with contemporary New York artists since the early eighties. Exhibitions held in Soho, Chelsea, and New York City museums have therefore been made available to universities and museums worldwide, ranging from the Whitney Museum of American Art here in New York, to the University of Tokyo.

Photographer Jules Allen has published widely, mainly on New York subjects such as the metaphoric document of Gleason’s boxing gym, to Hats and Hats Not, a serious look at the Harlem African American culture through the hats worn by members of the community. More recently he has visited and photographed in several countries in West and Central Africa. Expanding his oeuvre to a book of nudes is only one of the many projects that he has undertaken as he has traveled and photographed worldwide.  His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The National Gallery (Washington, D.C.), The Brooklyn Museum, The International Center of Photography (New York), The Schomberg Center for Art and Culture (New York) and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He is the recipient of NYFA grants and several CUNY grants, as well as others.
He was recently nominated for a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Bob Rogers is a photographer and film maker. His work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, the Washington Square East Gallery, and the Art Club of Washington, D.C. He has published on photography snapshots and postcards in the Art Journal of the National College Art Association and in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, the most prestigious Art History journal in France.

Javier Cambre’s work has been widely exhibited internationally, including in New York, Spain, Puerto Rico and Russia.  He is the recipient of many grants and was awarded residencies in San Francisco and at MoMA’s branch in Queens, P.S. 1.   His work has been acquisitioned for the collection of the Whitney Museum.The two-channel video installation in the present exhibition, 1 + 1, takes its title from the Jean-Luc Godard film One plus one.The video features, as one of the performers, a Queensborough student, Omar Shareef (no relation to Barbara Streisand . . .).

Ken Golden, our senior Digital Art and Design professor, has had many screenings of his videos, especially Maya/Cambodia, a documentary of the search for the birth parents of the daughter of his neighbor.  It has been shown in New York, Detroit and Berkley.  Another video, QueensMap, can be seen on kgolden.com.  In our present exhibition he is showcasing his more recent digital prints in which he explores personal issues, Imaging Self and More, for which he was awarded one of four PSC-CUNY Grants that he has received

Anissa Mack, a sculptor as well as an installation and performance artist has shown at the Queens Museum, performed Pies for a Passerby in front of the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, a performance and installation piece that was funded by the Public Art Fund, and at Wave Hill in the Bronx.  Her humorous investigation of our customs and mores has extended to a performance in which she dressed as a bride and threw a bouquet from a balcony to a group of single women who scrambled to catch it, and a home “Tupperware” party at which she sold art instead of plastic containers that store food. Anissa worked as a graphic designer in advertising for ten years before joining our faculty two years ago as a Digital Art professor.  She has already made an important impact on our students.

Osvaldo Marti attended the High School of Music and Art, C.C.N.Y., and holds an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute.  He joined our department in 1975 and has been a technician in Art and Photography for twenty-nine years. Nonetheless, he has continued to pursue his painting and drawing, especially of the figure. In his own words, “Figure drawing becomes a reflection of . . . qualities of grace, elegance and style that are ideals of beauty in our culture and which we seek to document.” He has exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum,The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and in numerous SOHO galleries.

Philip Listengart has been our popular Adjunct Associate Professor of sculpture for over twenty years, while teaching concomitantly at Purchase College, SUNY where he was recently voted Teacher of the Year. His interest in sculpture is equaled by his interest in music, especially Mozart, and jazz. This is evidenced in his current project, which features three 300-pound bronze bells. The work of art in this show is a maquette for the larger project.

Michael Ritchie is an Adjunct Assistant Professor who, although a sculptor by training, is equally at home teaching two-dimensional design or digital art.  His most recent project is an “information booth” similar to one that might be found on any city street.  However, Prof. Ritchie’s booth is constructed on a tilt, with jutting panels at disjunctive angles.  The work of art is a metaphor for the type of information that is dispensed in the media every day and by extension, for the way in which we experience events, for how can we feel securely grounded when the veracity of received information is skewed, and therefore in constant question?  Michael Ritchie has exhibited in numerous group and one-person shows, at venues that include the Nassau County Museum in Roslyn, N.Y., the Queens Museum (reviewed in the New York Times), the Kingston Outdoor Sculpture Biennial, SOHO 20, the Omni Gallery and Montclair University in Montclair, New Jersey.    

Greg Pitts, adjunct Assistant Professor of Ceramics, is also on the faculty of Teachers College/Columbia University and The City College of New York.  He has exhibited nationally and internationally and been widely reviewed.  His work is showcased in Galleries in New York, Cambridge, Northampton, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Santa Fe and Chicago.  He has won numerous awards and has work in both public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe.

Liz DiGiorgio is an Adjunct Instructor of painting and drawing. She received her B.A. at Cooper Union and her M.F.A at Hunter College, CUNY. Her current work focuses on ceramic objects whose graphic clarity take on an abstract quality that is enhanced by her color palette of blues and gray lavender. She defines these tranquil pieces as “universal self-portraits.” Her work has been exhibited in many one-person shows in New York, Kansas City, Mo., Philadelphia, Pa., (reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer) and others. She is the recipient of two prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, and is in art collections, both private and public, including the Hallmark Fine Art Collection.

Julia Healy is an Adjunct Lecturer who teaches painting. She holds an M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago and received a one year Fellowship to Yale University. Her work explores visual metaphors of the human condition.  Her art has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, N.Y., The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Institute of Chicago, and numerous galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Canada.  Her work is in the collection of the Canadian government, including a piece that is hung in the Queen’s bedroom in Ottawa.

Beata Szpura, adjunct instructor, received her degree from Parsons School of Design in illustration. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wal street Journal, Cosmopolitan and several book covers for Farrar, Straus & Giroux.  Two of her mobiles and a holiday greeting card have been published and distributed by the museum of Modern Art.  Having had many years of experience as a professional artist, she is able to mentor her students in business practice for the artist, copyright law, professional presentations, and last but certainly foremost, drawing and painting. She writes, “An artist can depict everyday objects and show that they can be magical.”

Ryan Seslow is a versatile artist whose first love is printmaking, although as an Adjunct Instructor in our department he has taught also drawing and two-dimensional design. He holds a B.F.A. from the Hartford School of Art of the University of Hartford, and an M.F.A. from Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus. He has won numerous awards from Nassau County, L.I.U. and has exhibited repeatedly at his alma mater and in Nassau County. He describes his philosophy of art thus: “Art glorifies and accepts the differences of our nature as human beings.”

Deanne DeNyse